


Zwadderich

by lizard_socks



Series: Rootstock [9]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Age Regression/De-Aging, Alternate Universe - Harry Potter Setting, Author is not trans, Characters Are Aware of J.K. Rowling's Transphobia, Characters Have Read Harry Potter, Dreams vs. Reality, Gen, Memory Alteration, Science Fiction, Self-Worth Issues
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-14
Updated: 2021-01-14
Packaged: 2021-03-18 13:08:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,326
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28743756
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lizard_socks/pseuds/lizard_socks
Summary: Yesterday, Ashley Dekker was a 31-year-old security officer on a starship. Today, she's a 15-year-old witch in Scotland. They say Hogwarts is real, and the starship was just a recurring dream of hers, but she's not so sure.
Series: Rootstock [9]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1778194
Kudos: 1





	Zwadderich

The first thing Ashley noticed when she woke up was that she had gotten drool all over the right sleeve of her pajamas. The second thing was that the pajamas weren't hers.  


She stayed absolutely still; not making a single sound, not even opening her eyes. Something wasn't quite right. Nothing was quite right, really; she was on an unfamiliar bed in an unfamiliar room. But there was also something wrong with _her.  
_

She listened as carefully as she could, until she was satisfied that nobody was in the room with her. Still, she tried to act as natural as she could when getting out of bed. A decade spent in outer space with laser-bow-wielding aliens had taught her that she could never be too careful. The room had an incongruous feeling to it; the walls and ceilings of the vast space were ornate, apparently made of stone, but the room itself was filled with empty, ordinary-looking beds.  


Still, Ashley's attention was mostly on herself. Whoever had taken her here had also done _something_ to her body - she couldn't tell what, but she really hoped it wasn't what she thought it was. After one more quick look around the room, she spotted a mirror in the corner, and went over to take a look.  


_Oh, thank God.  
_

Sure, she had been kidnapped by some unknown entity. But she was still human, and she was still herself. And most importantly, they hadn't made any of the more intrusive changes she was worried about; she'd had her reasons for turning down the typical medical components of a human gender transition, and if some random alien had thought they knew better than her what a real girl was like, they would have had hell to pay. But apparently, all they had done was make her younger. Maybe about... fourteen?  


Ashley sighed and sat back down on the bed she had just gotten out of. She rubbed her eyes. She really didn't want to go back to being a teenager. The bad parts were already coming back to her, and the good ones... well, those never would.  


At once, another human appeared on the other side of the room, as if from thin air. Ashley instinctively reached for a weapon, but of course she had nothing on her.  


"Well, your reflexes look all right," the woman said with a wry smile. "I can see why Hatton says you're one of the most gifted duelists in all of Slytherin House."  


Ashley's eyes went wide. She looked frantically around the room.  


"Am I in _Harry Potter_?"  


"Well, if we were to find you inside another student, that certainly would be a problem, wouldn't it?"  


Ashley groaned. She was _not_ looking forward to dealing with this. But the easiest way to get more information would be to play along. "So this is the hospital wing?"  


"Ah, I should have given you some context," the woman said. "We were worried about your dreams, that they were threatening to overtake your perception of reality. We thought that suppressing your real memories, and allowing the dreams to take over, would keep the problem from getting worse while we figure out a more permanent solution."  


"So all my memories right now are a dream?"  


"Everything before the age of twelve should be intact."  


Ashley frowned. "I thought I was 31 years old. That's over half my life."  


"Oh, yes. I'm afraid you might be stuck with that uncomfortable feeling for a while. If you don't mind, there's something I'd like to try before we take more invasive measures."  


"And that is?"  


"Walk around the castle. Talk to people as you normally would. I think it may help restore your memories, this time in a more stable fashion."  


Ashley raised her hand.  


"Question?"  


"Isn't this a school? Don't I have... classes and stuff?"  


"You've been granted leave for the time being. I expect that performing magic may be difficult for you."  


"Yeah, no kidding."

* * *

"So this time, you had _two_ guests on the ship? Are you sure it wasn't just two different dreams?"  


"No, it was definitely the same one," Sam said.  


"And in these dreams, the wizarding world, Hogwarts, all of it - it's just some old fantasy story. What's real is fake, what's fake is real. I don't know. Seems a little cliché."

Sam shrugged and started packing up his own things.  


After a few seconds, the other student glanced back at him. "You think your dreams are real, don't you?" she asked.  


"I think it's _plausible_ ," he said. "I mean, 400 years is a lot of time. And I grew up with muggles, remember? You ask me when I'm eight which is more likely, aliens in 400 years or magic now, and I say aliens for sure."  


"Well, who else was there?"  


"Leaf. Oh, and that Dekker kid."  


"Really? You spend all your time with us–" she gestured to the other students, sitting all around them in the middle of the Hufflepuff commons "–and you dream about a Ravenclaw and a Slytherin?"  


"They're my friends. You know that."  


"I'm just saying, it's _kinda_ unusual."  


"This place could use more unusual if you ask me. Not you guys–" this time Sam gestured to the crowd around them, who were minding their own business and not paying attention. "But a lot of things kinda rub me the wrong way."  


"Maybe it's just being from America?"  


"I guess."  


A knocking sound came from the door and it slid open. No one paid it any mind until they saw who stepped through: a young, nervous-looking third-year student, wearing some incredibly gaudy Slytherin house regalia that was far too short for her tall frame.  


* * *

Sam followed Ashley back out the door and down the corridor into the empty kitchen.  


"So." Ashley pulled a chair over and sat down. She looked up at Sam, who was leaning against the wall. "You're human now."  


"I take it you think the spaceship world is real, and this world's not."  


"Well, to be honest, I'm not quite as sure as I was this morning. I've been finding that I remember an awful lot of stuff from this supposedly fictional universe."  


"Listen." Sam sighed. "That doesn't mean anything. I didn't wanna get into it with the other Hufflepuffs over something like this that makes me sound crazy. I know stuff about both worlds too. Yeah, this one _feels_ more real to me. But I know the spaceship world's the actual real one."  


"Seriously? How?"  


Sam pulled out two pieces of parchment from an invisible pocket in his robe. He handed one to Ashley. "If this is the real world, then we shouldn't know the names of the people who made the Maurader's Map. But I'm guessing we do."  


They both scribbled down some names, then Sam put the parchments on a table, side by side. His own read:  


> harry's dad  
>  sirius  
>  that rat guy  
>  lupin  
> 

Ashley had written:  


> James Potter  
>  Sirius Zwarts  
>  Remus Lupos  
>  Peter Pippeling  
> 

"I'm Surinamese," she said matter-of-factly. "I read it in Dutch." 

"My point is, this proves that the world we're in right now is a work of fiction. There's no reason we should know this stuff. Speaking of... how'd you know how to get in our common room?"  


Ashley peeked over her shoulder. "It's the easiest one to get into. You just gotta tap a little rhythm on the barrel."  


"And who told you?"  


"Nobody."  


" _Exactly._ You read it in the books! There's no way a regular student would find that out, but when you're reading from the perspective of–"  


"It wasn't in the books. It was in the supplementary materials."  


Sam grimaced.  


"I know, Sam. I was worried too. She's got some awful ideas and she doesn't think I ought to be myself. Every time I look around this place I'm reminded of her."  


"And you still read all the weird fanfic she wrote for her own story."  


"When I was growing up, Harry Potter was _the_ thing. Look at it this way. If Ajax had a star playmaker who thought your religion was a piece of crap, but all your family and friends were Ajax supporters, wouldn't you still kinda wanna know whether or not they win the Eredivisie?"  


"I guess I'll just never understand."  


"That's fair," Ashley said. "So now what?"  


"We get the hell out?"  


Ashley just stared at Sam. "It was weird enough to hear you swear when you were an adult."

"I'm seventeen!" Sam threw up his arms. "That's close enough!"  


* * *

Leaf the monster was sitting on a bench in the corridor, dressed in his plain black robes like every other student, although he had attached some blue and brown feathers in an attempt to show some of the Ravenclaw house spirit in advance of the Quidditch match against Gryffindor - a futile effort, apparently; the other students in the house weren't showing a lot of interest.  


"I suppose it seems more attainable," the monster said to the house-elf sitting next to him. "I've never been comfortable with a physical relationship. But when you're making a film for a mass audience, there's only so much you can show. And that pushes the story in a direction which is close to my own experience."  


"And you believe Pyrite would enjoy this movie?" the house-elf asked.  


"Of course," Leaf told her. "A good romantic comedy isn't just about the romance, any more than a superhero movie is about the villain. It's about the characters, and how they interact with each other."  


Leaf turned to his left as another student came up the stairs. He waved to her. "Ashley!"  


Ashley's eyes opened wide. " _Leaf!?_ "  


"Why's it that you're so surprised? It's not a big school - you were bound to run into me eventually."  


"Yeah, but... you look _the same_." Ashley walked over towards the bench as Sam followed behind her, his hands in his pockets.  


Leaf smiled. "Thanks!"  


"No, I mean, you're not human, like Sam is."  


"It makes sense," Sam told her. "Leaf's already magic. He's already a monster. He'd make just as much sense in this world as he does in ours." He stepped forward. "It's the dreams, Leaf. We think they might be real."  


"You really think so?"  


Sam nodded.  


"I've discovered something else on that front, by the way." Leaf gestured to the house-elf still sitting on the bench next to him. She seemed to be looking off into the distance. "We thought it was only the three of us who were having these dreams. Pyrite is too."  


"The other house-elves do not have these dreams," Pyrite added. "Only Pyrite has them."  


"That's what you were talking about when we got here?" asked Ashley.  


"No," Leaf said. "I was telling her that she should watch _When Harry Met Sally_."  


Sam smiled. "Honestly, Leaf. Maybe you should have been born a muggle."  


"I like their stuff, sure." He gave a little shrug. "But when it comes down to it, I'm different from them."  


Ashley looked over at the bench. She could have sworn it only had enough room for Leaf and the house-elf, but now it was long enough for her to sit down as well. She took a seat.  


"Pyrite?"  


"Yes?"  


"That's really you?"  


"Yes."  


"I never thought I'd say this about a house-elf, but you look cute."  


"Pyrite appreciates the complement."  


Ashley sighed. She looked forward, past the students going from one place to another, past the shifting staircases behind them, and fixed her eyes on the daytime horizon visible through the far window.  


"Why on earth would you be a house-elf, Pyrite?"  


"In the dream, Pyrite is not from Earth. She is from a planet of sentient–"  


"I know. But the three of us - we're all students. What's different about you?"  


The house-elf looked down at her feet. "Pyrite is not like you. Pyrite was made to serve others."  


"Nobody wants you to be serving them, Pyrite. You deserve to be your own person. You know that."  


"But... but Pyrite does not think she can do this."  


"I'll help you with that. We all will." Ashley threw a glance at Leaf and Sam, who were buried deep in some old book about dream worlds. "But first we gotta figure out how to get back home."  


* * *

"How'd you do?" asked Leaf as the four of them sat on the polyurethane.

They had agreed to meet in the most logical place for a semi-secret mission, the Room of Requirement. Everyone else had classes to attend or errands to run, but Ashley had headed straight for the magically changing room hidden in the old castle. She'd needed one other thing from it first.  


It might be the only thing she actually liked about the place.  


"My high jumps have been inconsistent," Ashley said. "Guess that happens when you magically get sixteen years younger overnight. But my best attempts are right in line with when I actually _was_ fifteen."  


"So it is your body," Pyrite said.  


"Exactly. And thank god. This could have been so much worse."  


Leaf stood and pointed his wand at the space between them. A rough sketch of six faces appeared in shimmering blue ink hovering an inch above the floor. "Here's what we're thinking so far," he said. "We don't know who created this world, or why they decided to copy old kids' books from Earth. But let's be honest - all four of us are weirdly obsessed with that planet. Maybe that's got something to do with it."

He pointed at the sketch of his own face. "I think the roles we occupy in this world are taken from our own minds - the ways we project ourselves onto this story. I already call myself a monster, but I also have a desire to live among humans. So here, I'm a monster, but also a student." He pointed at the sketch for Pyrite - a pentagonal-headed face, very different from her current appearance. "Pyrite was a servant to a monarchical society for the first 550 years of her life. She's only been free for two."  


The house-elf nodded. "Pyrite is uncomfortable with her new place in the world. She does not see herself as an individual."  


"As for Ashley." Leaf pointed his wand at a drawing of a woman with long messy hair. "She imagines herself as a normal student. Just like any kid in the 90s who would have read these books growing up. If my theory is right, it would suggest that no one's misgendered you yet?"  


"No problems at all," Ashley said. "That's how I know this isn't really 1990s Earth. If I'd decided to come out to anyone but my family back then, no way it would have been this smooth."  


"And then there's you, Sam," said Leaf. "You're an alien, but you know it would be weird to have aliens in a fantasy. You don't mind changing your name _and_ your species if it's the right choice for the story."  


"What about Sheleth?" asked Sam.  


"Sheleth..." Leaf glanced off to the side. "I still haven't seen her. But after running into Pyrite as a house elf? I'm guessing whatever Sheleth is in this world, she's not human."  


Ashley looked down at her ill-fitting Slytherin robes.  


"I have an idea," she said. "An absurd, far-fetched, but incredibly low-risk idea."  


* * *

Sam and Ashley ducked into an apparently abandoned hallway.  


"You sure you can conjure a snake?" Ashley asked.  


"Yeah, sure. I do it all the time."  


"...Why?"  


"They're the easiest animal to conjure." Sam pulled out his wand. "And they're cute."  


He said the incantation, and on the floor in front of them appeared a serpent: small, green, and about a meter in length. Ashley dropped to one knee and looked the snake in the eyes.  


_Hi snake_ , she said.  


_Hi,_ said the snake.  


_I was just wondering,_ asked Ashley, _have you seen anyone named Shelly who dreams about being on a spaceship?  
_

_Um, no? I don't know who that is. You just conjured me. How am I supposed to know this stuff?_

"Really?" Sam asked. "She said that?"

"I'm paraphrasing." Ashley sighed. "I figured, well, Sheleth's a reptile, so maybe in this world she'd be a reptile too. And there aren't a lot of lizards or anything around here."

"Maybe we're going about this the wrong way," said Sam. "Pyrite's a house-elf because that's the way she saw herself and her place in the world. How does Sheleth see herself? Who does she compare herself to?"

"Well, her planet's society's got that urban/rural conflict going on." Ashley paced back and forth. "She's from the city domes, but she fell in love with someone from the outside. So she's got this incredible attachment to someone who's perceived as opposite to her."

"It's about her self-perception, too," added Sam. "As critical as she is of her own society, she still thinks of herself as a city dweller. How's that map to this world, though?"  


_Isn't she also a princess?_ asked the snake.  


Ashley glanced down at her. _How do you know that?  
_

_I don't know. Ask Sam, he conjured me.  
_

"The snake says she's a princess."  


"I guess you could say that," said Sam. "She does belong to a royal family, after all. She's a first cousin of the city's governor. She has an influential family. Not that she ever uses that to her advantage."  


"But she doesn't deny it." Ashley looked off to the side and put her hands on her hips. "It bothers her. She thinks about her upbringing a lot, and it bothers her, the world she comes from. The way she benefits from inequality. If she was reading these books, who do you think she'd see herself as?"  


"A pure-blood?"  


"A pure-blood, and a Slytherin."  


"She's also the captain of our ship," Sam noted. "She's our boss. You think we should be taking a look at the professors?"  


Ashley thought for a moment, then shook her head. "No. She might be our boss, but she has a boss of her own. She's middle management. I think I know where to find her."  


* * *

Michelle Greengrass absentmindedly tapped her dry quill against the parchment. After finishing her work in potions, transfiguration, and history, the Slytherin house prefect had finally run out of ways to procrastinate on her divination assignment.  


"Something bothering you?" asked a light blue insect on her desk.  


Michelle looked over her shoulder, but the Slytherin dungeon was empty this time of day. "No one's supposed to know you can talk."  


"I still don't know how you got away with bringing a bug as your pet," the insect said. "We are _not_ on the approved pets list."  


Michelle sighed. "Something's always bothering me, Fer."  


"It was his choice to go out there and put himself on the front lines, Shelly. He wanted to make sure at least one of you would survive."  


"You're right, you're right, I know you're right." Michelle looked again at the blank page in front of her. "That's not what I'm worried about, though. It's Ashley."  


"Boy Ashley or Girl Ashley?"  


"Girl Ashley," said Michelle. "From overseas. It's a girl's name there, I suppose. She's been having dreams she thinks is real. I heard it got so bad, they actually had to suppress her _real_ memories so they wouldn't be fighting inside her mind."  


"You're worried she won't ever get them back?" Fer asked.  


"I'm worried the same thing is gonna happen to me! I've been having dreams like that too. Same exact thing. It's creepy. I'm almost starting to think the dream world is the real one."  


"You know what I think? I think maybe it is."  


"Seriously? How would _you_ know?"  


"It's something about Ashley. There's something about that kid... she reminds me of you, I guess. She seems real. More real than anyone else. Well, except maybe that one house-elf."  


"Which one?" Michelle asked.  


"Pyrite."  


"Oh, crap."  


"What?"  


"She was in the dream too. She was some sort of holographic– I don't know, it's weirdly complicated. But I think you might be onto something."  


Michelle made her way down the spiral staircase and almost ran into Ashley, who was on her way up.

"Shelly?"

"Since when do you call me that?"

"Just checking," Ashley said. "About the dreams–"

"You think they might be real? That the people in the dreams might be the only real people?"

"I mean, I don't think we have enough proof to _act_ on it," said Ashley. "But we've all had them. Sam, Leaf, Pyrite. If there's any way to get _back_ to that world? I think we're gonna need your help. And your bug."

Michelle looked back to see Fer hovering in the air behind her.

"What are you doing here?" Michelle asked.  


"I was in the dream too, wasn't I?" the insect said. "I remember that. I was the boss. I ran the company that owned the ship."  


"Now that you mention it... that particular alien _did_ have antennae. And she was blue." Michelle turned back to Ashley. "We were all aliens. Except you. You were the only human. And we've all had these dreams about this other reality, but you're the only one who actually perceives it as real."  


"Really?" asked Ashley. "You don't?"  


"Well, if I'm being honest with myself... yeah, it seems real to me too. I've just been trying to hide it. Does everyone feel that way?"  


"Just the two of us, I think. Pyrite and Leaf aren't totally convinced. Sam thinks it's real, but that's just on the basis of me knowing stuff I shouldn't."  


"It doesn't feel real to me, either." Fer landed on the handrail and folded in her wings. "Even though I remember things about it. And I'm just a bug. I don't think I even _have_ dreams."  


Ashley walked past Michelle and Fer and took a seat on the staircase behind them. "Think about who we were in the other world, biologically speaking," she said. "Pyrite's pretty much a robot; we know she could get reprogrammed to some extent. Leaf's vulnerable to magic spells. Sam's got a symbiote attached to his spine, and who knows what you could do to those."  


"And Fer, too," Michelle said. "I think I remember her species didn't have normal brains. They were like symbiotes inside empty shells."  


"Which leaves the two of us," Ashley said. "We're ordinary organic lifeforms. Whatever is trying to overwrite our memories, it's not working quite right on us."  


* * *

Ten minutes later, Ashley and Michelle arrived at the entrance to the Ravenclaw common room.  


_I was not a quarterback,_ _yet I won the Heisman at Michigan in the 1990s. I later played for Green Bay and Oakland in the NFL. Who am I?  
_

Michelle threw up her arms. "That's not a riddle!" she shouted. "That's a trivia question! An _American_ trivia question! Aren't we supposed to be in Scotland?"

The door opened in front of them, and a gray monster peeked through from the other side.

"Hey, Leaf," Michelle said.  


Leaf squinted at the Slytherin prefect. "Am I in trouble or something?" he asked.  


"We need your help, I think," said Ashley.  


Leaf joined them in the corridor, taking a seat on a nearby chair normally reserved for students who couldn't figure out the day's riddle. "So what's new with the dream situation?"  


"We think you might be able to get us out of here with magic," said Michelle. "Not fake Harry Potter magic. _Your_ magic."  


"What do you want me to do?"  


"Explosions?"  


Ashley put her hand on Michelle's shoulder. " _...Tiny_ explosions."  


"Hmm. I guess I can try."  


* * *

Misam curled up on a bench, his orange tail hanging over the edge. He spotted Pyrite out of the corner of his eye and gave her a little smile. "Guess they fixed something, huh?"

Pyrite sighed. "Leaf was right, Sam. The things we were in this simulation... I mean, that's still the way I see myself. As much as I don't want to."

"You're aware of it, though. And I mean, how many years has it been since they told you to leave your homeworld and go find something else to do? Two or three? You've been alive over five hundred."

The two of them turned around as a young human with a red metal suit and some sort of large arm cannon came running up the stairs. They stopped in their tracks when they saw Misam on the bench. "Who are you two?" the human asked. "I don't remember this simulation having a cat boy and a giant salt shaker."  


Misam sat up. "Axyridis? What are you doing here?"  


"Running a simulation," the human said. "I was just about to trash the place."  


"Isn't that supposed to be Voldemort's job?"  


"Yeah, that's why I have to do it quick before he can! That's the challenge of it!"  


They ran off without another word. Misam smiled and turned to Pyrite.  


"Well," he said, "at least they're destroying _holographic_ property this time around."  


* * *

"Ugh." Sheleth collapsed onto the beanbag chair in her office. "Remind me never to enter an unknown computer simulation again. Especially when my boss is watching."  


Misam put his hands in his pockets. "So was I right, Shelly? About why you were a Slytherin?"  


"Yep." She sighed loudly. "You've known Ashley a long time, right? Ever since her time jump?"  


Misam nodded.  


"Why's _she_ a Slytherin? She doesn't seem, you know... evil."  


"Think about it this way. When Ashley ended up here, in the future, she could have stayed on Earth and gotten all her needs taken care of. But she doesn't want to be taken care of - she wants to accomplish something. She wants to help people, sure, but not just because they need help. She wants to be the person who _gets_ them that help."  


"You think she wants my job?" Sheleth asked.  


"Maybe someday."  


"Well, that's good. No one else does."  



End file.
